


Friends Tell Friends When They're Hibernating (or else everyone tends to get very worried)

by BuzzCat



Series: Queen's Greatest Hits [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Gen, The Hundred Year Nap, Worried Aziraphale (Good Omens), fun fact- in the book Crowley sleeps through most of the 1800s. this is to do with that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 02:43:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19432282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuzzCat/pseuds/BuzzCat
Summary: Crowley asked Aziraphale for holy water, gave his angel a proper fright about exactly what he might be doing with that holy water, then proceeded to disappear for over twenty years. Aziraphale wasn't prone to worrying (at least he denied the fact when accused of it), but not taking notice of something like that would have been irresponsible.





	Friends Tell Friends When They're Hibernating (or else everyone tends to get very worried)

Aziraphale worried at his lip, a human habit he’d picked up in the 18th century that he’d never quite managed to shake. He wasn’t concerned, not at all. Nothing concerned him at all.

It was just…well, it had been a while.

When he’d last seen Crowley, it had been when the demon asked for holy water, of all things. And Crowley had said it wasn’t for…for what Aziraphale had thought it was for, but it had been years now and he hadn’t heard anything from Crowley in a very long time, not a whisper of him wiling about.

Aziraphale blinked and realized he’d entirely destroyed the playbill in his hands. He’d been staring at the stage, ostensibly watching Romeo and Juliet for the last two hours, but Aziraphale was ashamed to realize he hadn’t been paying attention at all.

It had been years. Which, as immortal beings, wasn’t quite so terrible as it was for a human, but almost twenty years was about fifteen years past how long Aziraphale was comfortable going without seeing Crowley, especially in light of their last conversation. Each day he kept hoping to see the old serpent slithering around a corner in London, some sort of proposed Arrangement on his mind and then they could continue like they always had, doing temptings and blessings and generally getting lunch as an excuse to procrastinate either. Crowley had even been coming around more recently, after the events at the Bastille. But then there was the day in St. James Square and now, now Aziraphale hadn’t seen him in years and—

“Oh to hell with it.”

If he was going to watch Shakespeare, he was going to watch Shakespeare and if he was going to worry about Crowley he was going to worry about Crowley, and he wasn’t going to dishonor one by trying to do the other.

Aziraphale waited until intermission before scooting out of his seat and striding out of the building, coming to a stop at the street outside. He looked left, and he looked right. Crowley had to be around here somewhere. He had to still be in England, at least; Aziraphale doubted anything could pry Crowley from the country these days. London, most likely. And really, there weren’t that many demons in London anyway. He closed his eyes, reaching out and feeling for demonic presence. It was like feeling out for angelic presence, only with a fewer celestial harmonies and more slink to the feeling. Aziraphale silently stood and plotted his mental map, dropping pins anywhere in the area he could feel the demons.

He’d simply track them all down until he found the one that was Crowley.

Six years later, Aziraphale was really starting to fret. He’d tracked all the demons he could, but they were flighty buggers, up and then Down before he could come by and even when they were on Earth, they had the indecency to move about so much it was difficult to keep track of which ones he’d already checked, like a memory game with upside down cards, only it was also a shell game and extra shells kept being introduced and taken off the table so fast the pea may have been under any of them.

And he still hadn’t found Crowley.

Crowley still hadn’t found him.

Really, it was quite inconsiderate of Crowley to just up and disappear without even leaving a note or a message, anything. At least a letter would have been nice, something that said “I’m buggering off for a good quarter decade because an angel wouldn’t give me a suicide pill so I’m going to disappear and worry him out of his mind, thanks very much.”

Aziraphale stood outside the alley, having just checked off his list the last demonic presence in the area as definitely not Crowley. A young girl walked by and he heard the demon shuffle in the alley and the girl stopped, turning to wonder. Aziraphale flipped his hand and the girl turned away from the alley, walking on her way. Really, in Crowley’s absence and Aziraphale’s increased proximity to demons, he’d been doing an awful lot of thwarting. If he kept this up, Upstairs was going to start realizing just how little thwarting he’d been doing up to this point.

Aziraphale sighed, closing his eyes. The map he’d been dropping pins in for six years was at this point more pinholes than map and he still hadn’t found one singular trace of Crowley.

He hadn’t discorporated, that much Aziraphale knew. If Crowley wasn’t on Earth anymore, and if Aziraphale’s job was to thwart Crowley, then surely Head Office would have reached out and reassigned him. They’d know and he’d know and if he was still here, then Crowley was still here.

Because of course they’d know, wouldn’t they? And they’d tell him if he was being reassigned, surely?

Aziraphale felt the worry, closely followed by something a second cousin removed from doubt, start creeping in at the edges.

Crowley couldn’t be destroyed. And he couldn’t be discorporated. Because if he was gone, that meant Aziraphale was…alone. Not alone alone, in the sense that he was never alone as long as he could feel his connection to Her and the thin threads—growing thinner as the years went on, if he’d ever bothered to look—that tied him to the heavenly host. But if Crowley was gone, then he was alone as in there would be no one to Get It. To understand how humanity was so wonderful and inventive and heartbreaking and terrible, no one to make the jokes Aziraphale himself wouldn’t let himself make, no one to get lunch with and tell silly stories with.

If Crowley was gone, then Aziraphale had no one to be with. And he very much liked being with someone, even if he hadn’t realized exactly how much until he had been without for over twenty-five years.

Aziraphale turned and blindly walked onward, miraculously making it through traffic he wasn’t looking out for. Crowley had to be here somewhere but Aziraphale was more and more hard-pressed to say where.

His feet, led perhaps by the need for guidance, led him to a church. There was no service in, but people were praying in the pews. Aziraphale stepped in, feeling the mixed feeling he always felt stepping into churches. Churches and the people running them had done terrible things in Her name and sometimes it tasted a little too bitterly of humanity’s self-sewn destruction to be in a church. Other times, it seemed a glaring reminder of all the things angels were that Aziraphale was not. While Crowley never came into the churches with Aziraphale, they had often walked past one and admired the architecture if nothing else.

Today, however, Aziraphale knelt and dipped his fingers in the holy water, making the sign of the cross before walking up the aisle, kneeling again before he shifted sideways down a pew row and knelt before the pulpit. He didn’t know if She was here, or if she even listened to angels who were silly enough to pray for demons in a church, but it was better than nothing.

Aziraphale whispered quietly to himself. To Her, if she was listening. “Hello. It’s Aziraphale, Principality and Guardian of the Eastern Gate. Well, I was, back when there were still gates to be guarded and not simply a world to be blessed, but that’s—that’s beside the point. I’m here on…on unofficial business, I suppose. I know maybe it’s…outside of your purview these days,” Aziraphale winced to even presume he knew the limitations of Her purview, “b-but I was looking for a particular demon. Crowley, or Crawly as he was originally Named. He’s been missing for a good few years and I was wondering if-if you might,” Aziraphale squeezed his eyes shut, like a child admitting a wrong and waiting for the shouting to start, “point me in the right direction.”

He froze, eyes squeezed shut and hands folded in front of him, waiting. Maybe there would be a voice, or just a sudden knowledge of Crowley’s exact whereabouts and the reasons for them. Or maybe there would be a clap of lightning and the church and Aziraphale would be wiped off the map for daring to ask Her about a demon, of all things. Or maybe Crowley would waltz through the doors and call him out for praying in church like a human.

There was nothing.

No clap, no lightning, no sudden knowing.

Aziraphale opened one eye, looking around. The people were still praying, the candles still flickering. Nothing had happened.

Granted, he hadn’t expected to get much when he was angel going about the human way of communication, which had a reputation for being as effective as sending a letter addressed to ‘The Woman with the Big Blue Hat Who Lunches Six Doors Down on Every Other Wednesday’. Still, he’d rather hoped for something. He frowned, then closed his eyes and prayed some more for the people he’d seen recently; the dog who’d had a narrow miss from being run down by a horse, the young man who felt guilty for how he looked at the other young men, the old woman with the knees that ached whenever she tried to tend her plants, and the hundred others he’d seen that Aziraphale had wanted to help. Even if praying like a human did nothing, he hoped it was noted somewhere that an angel had prayed to help some people and maybe one of the newer legions would look into it.

After hours, Aziraphale stood and knelt again at the end of the pew before walking out. A man held the door for him on his way out and Aziraphale nodded, “Thank you.”

It was getting dark outside and Aziraphale turned to the right, following the darkest alleys he could find. There was little lurking in dark alleys to put fear into him, and if he was the thing walking through dark alleys then London was safer for it.

It was two alleys and a particularly dodgy street over when Aziraphale felt something ping on his demon map, a new pin thunking into place. He paused, frowning as he turned toward where the pin had thunked. It was a graveyard, of all things. The stones were old, some covered in lichen while others were still fairly legible. But there was the pin, somewhere in the graveyard—and quite far underground, if Aziraphale wasn’t mistaken—and just so close, not even out of the way really, just a quick little exploration to check. It was much more convenient than some of the other signals Aziraphale had chased over the years. He pushed open the creaking metal gate and stepped in, respectfully staying between the rows of headstones and following the signal like a dog on the scent.

Toward the back of the graveyard was a mausoleum, built directly into the wall of the graveyard itself. The signal was strong here, but it seemed almost to be sinking into its surroundings, coating it all like dust. _Strange_ , Aziraphale thought. He reached up to the door and quite miraculously, the tightly locked door found itself persuaded into unlatching quite politely.

Aziraphale stepped inside, expecting to be assaulted with the smell of rotten milk and decay that tended to pervade mausoleums and follow all demons but Crowley. Instead, Aziraphale found it smelled almost…pleasant. And it was warm, like a beach on a beautiful day. And in the middle of the floor, between two eternal resting places, was Crowley.

It had to be Crowley, even though Aziraphale could only see the very tips of some very red hair and hear soft snoring that echoed in the room. He appeared to be nestled in every blanket in England, creating a nest on the floor in which he was entangled. Aziraphale crept forward, his steps echoing. A pair of stylish black sunglasses sat folded on the nearest stone, which cemented it: Crowley was hiding in a mausoleum, taking a nap.

For twenty-six years.

While Aziraphale ran over hither and yon, trying make sure Crowley hadn’t gotten himself caught in the Arrangement and discorporated, or done something really stupid trying to get holy water. While Aziraphale spent twenty-six years _worrying_. And Crowley had been asleep the whole time.

Aziraphale was going to scream. Or at least nudge Crowley’s foot hard enough to wake him up but in a way that could still be construed as ‘accidental’, which is exactly what he did none to gently.

Crowley snuffled in his sleep, letting out a slurred ‘whozzat’ before turning over in his blanket nest and curling in a little closer. Two very large black wings came into view, flaring out to almost bop Aziraphale before stretching out to just barely brush the opposing walls before folding back in as Crowley’s breathing returned to the deep in and out it had been before.

Aziraphale frowned.

Apparently, Crowley had decided to sleep for the foreseeable future. Which wasn’t a problem, exactly, now that Aziraphale knew where he was, but it did put him in a rather awkward position. After twenty years of worrying and six years of constant searching, it felt a bit rude to find Crowley and just…leave him here. In a mausoleum. Granted, if he’d been intending to sleep for multiple years straight, Aziraphale could understand if he’d wanted to avoid nosy neighbors or landlords looking for rent, but now that Aziraphale had found him, leaving Crowley here just felt wrong. At least in the bookshop Aziraphale would be able to keep an eye on him, if anything were to happen. Of course, that didn’t explain exactly how Aziraphale was going to get the sleeping serpent from here to the bookshop.

He stepped forward, gently shaking Crowley’s shoulder. Crowley murmured and curled in a little tighter in the blankets, “No lemme sleep.”

“You can sleep in my flat, the bed’s always free. Come on, up you get.” Aziraphale hauled Crowley up by the armpits before the snake managed to convince one leg, then the other, the support his weight. Aziraphale easily slotted himself under one of Crowley’s arms and kept one of the arms around Aziraphale’s own shoulder. It was a bit of a slow pace, as Aziraphale had to keep making sure Crowley wasn’t going to collapse back into sleep at any moment, but he slowly managed to get Crowley out of the mausoleum and up back to ground level at least. He took dark alleys all the way to the bookshop, as surely someone on the main street would have asked why Aziraphale appeared to be dragging a body across London. Crowley was remarkably quiet the whole time, his gait a shuffling thing where his hips surprisingly managed to function as normal hips, as opposed to the slither Aziraphale had watched them do for thousands of years.

It took almost an hour but at long last, they were in front of the bookshop. Aziraphale propped Crowley up against the wall while he unlocked the front door, pulling his friend in and locking the door behind them.

“Now then, we’re almost there. Just up the stairs and then you can go back to sleep.”

“Been sleepin’ the whole time,” Crowley slurred, and Aziraphale absolutely didn’t doubt that. They wound their way through the bookshop, the precarious piles of precious volumes miraculously staying stable despite the wayward shuffle they made through the shop. Up the stairs at the back, Aziraphale gently dragged Crowley into the bedroom, where a bed that had been gathering dust since Aziraphale had bought the place sat unassumingly against the wall. The old lady who’d had the place before Aziraphale had left it here when she moved in with her son and Aziraphale just had never bothered to get rid of it. Now he was profoundly grateful for that as he toppled Crowley onto the bed. A puff of dust rose up around him, turning his black suit a rather patchy grey. Aziraphale blushed in embarrassment, even if his guest was too unconscious to care about the mess, and miracled the dust away with a brush of his hands.

Crowley shivered in the bed and the fireplace suddenly had a cheery little fire in it, wood popping in a homey sort of way. Aziraphale pulled the thick blanket off the chair beside the bed and draped it over his friend, another gift from the previous tenant. Instantly, Crowley relaxed, and his breathing drew deeper and more measured. Aziraphale narrowly managed to stop himself from actually tucking Crowley in; that might have been a step too far past would could plausibly be construed as the general sort of hospitality one shows those in need.

Aziraphale smiled to himself, feeling some disjointed thing in his chest finally slot back into place with a warm glow. The worry in his tense shoulders and the anxious knot in the pit of his stomach loosened and Aziraphale finally let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding for twenty-six years. Crowley was safe and would stay that way; Aziraphale would watch over him and make sure of that.

Eighty years later, Crowley opened his eyes and squinted in the sunlight. Funny, there wasn’t supposed to be sunlight in…wherever he’d fallen asleep, he couldn’t be particularly bothered to remember where that had been. He looked around and frowned, pulling a face. Wherever the Heaven he was now, he most definitely wouldn’t have fallen asleep here. For one, the bed was hard as a pile of rocks, and not even the kind nicely warmed in the sun. This was just lumpy nonsense.

Crowley turned and caught sight of the nightstand out of the corner of his eye. On the far corner sat a mug with steam still rising, a mug with angel wings for the handle.

Well, that answered a few questions and created even more.

He heard footsteps come up the stairs and sat up, rubbing at hair about a hundred years out of style. Crowley yawned, snake tongue slithering out. The air tasted of old wood and worn stone, but also of something suspiciously wholesome, which was par for the course if he’d really been bunked down with an angel for years and years.

Aziraphale stepped into the room, a sandwich plate in one hand and a book in the other, nose firmly in the book as he came across the room and sank into the squareish armchair in the corner. Just when the angel moved to set his plate down, Crowley spoke,

“Morning, angel.”

Aziraphale jumped, dropping plate and sandwich on the floor when he put a hand to the chest to steady a heartbeat he didn’t have.

“Oh my dear heavens, don’t frighten me like that.” He blinked, then smiled and it reminded Crowley uncomfortably much of the sun coming out from behind the clouds. “Oh Crowley, you’re awake!”

Crowley rolled his head to the left, then the right. “How long was I out?”

“A little over one hundred years, I suspect.”

Crowley blinked in surprise. “Well that’s a bit much, even by my standards.”

“I expect you’ll receive a commendation for such an excellent example of Sloth,” Aziraphale said as he put his opened his book back up.

Crowley nodded absently, “I expect.” Crowley looked around the room a little more, trying to slot together whatever had led up to his unexpected hibernation. Aziraphale had just turned the next page in his book when Crowley finally spoke, “I didn’t fall asleep here.”

“No, you did not.” Aziraphale didn’t look up from his book.

Aziraphale appeared to be quite miffed with him, which was a mystery he’d puzzle out once he knew what year it was. “How’d I get here?”

“You decided to sleep in a mausoleum, which they tore down fifty years ago. I happened to be passing by when the found you asleep in blankets in a room that supposedly had been locked for centuries.”

“Oh really?” A smirk unfurled across Crowley’s face, something with more teeth than it should have that was still too fond to be truly demonic. “They tore down the mausoleum?”

Aziraphale still hadn’t looked up from his book, though he’d been staring at the same line for almost a minute now. “Yes.”

“You didn’t bring me home just because you missed me?”

Aziraphale finally looked up, “It is my angelic duty to care for all of Her creatures.”

“She threw me out, angel.”

“All creatures of the Earth, then. You are on Earth, meaning your wellbeing falls within my duties.”

“’Course, angel. Of course.” Aziraphale’s eyes flitted up from his book, then back. Crowley sighed, running a hand through his bedhead hair. “Look, whatever it is I did, I’m sorry.”

“Pardon?” Aziraphale properly looked up from the book, meeting Crowley’s eyes for the first time and yes, there was something frosty about that look.

“You’re mad at me.”

“I may be less than pleased with some of your choices.”

Crowley bristled. “And what choice would that be?”

“You asked me for a suicide pill, then disappeared.” Something a little desperate bled into Aziraphale’s voice, remnants of an old fear. “I couldn’t find you, Crowley. And I thought…” Aziraphale couldn’t finish what he thought but Crowley heard.

“I’m…sorry.” There was a word he didn’t say often. “I didn’t think of how it would look. Next time I’m planning on, on going away for a while, I’ll give you a heads-up.”

Aziraphale nodded, a quick smile fleeting across his face.

They were quiet a moment, respect for the recent addendum to the Arrangement.

Crowley frowned and shifted on the bed. “Have you ever actually slept on this thing? I’ve slept on more comfortable hillsides.”

“It can’t be that terrible.” Aziraphale said with a scoff, all traces of frostiness gone. “I found you asleep on the stone ground.”

Crowley tilted his head back and forth, as if to illustrate ‘fair enough’. He looked around the room, taking in the way it radiated Aziraphale in its outdated-even-to-Crowley’s-knowledge style. He looked back to Aziraphale, “So. Lunch?”

Aziraphale miracled away the sandwich that had fallen to the floor. “Lunch! There is a lot to catch you up on. The colonies have been quite busy while you were gone.”

As Crowley sat up and started working out the kinks in his joints, Aziraphale felt something in his soul take a deep breath. Crowley was back. And Aziraphale hadn’t been lonely, exactly. But he’d been alone, in the immortal sort of way that mattered. Crowley was back and as they stepped out into the warm spring morning, Crowley miracling himself into whatever clothing the kids these days were wearing, Aziraphale felt the world click back into place at last.

**Author's Note:**

> Queen's Greatest Hits - The Great Pretender
> 
> Fun fact: this is the first thing I wrote for the Queen's Greatest Hits series, it just took me a while to figure out what the meat of it was about.
> 
> Side note, if anyone has any good fic recommendations about Crowley and Aziraphale in their time serving as Nanny and Gardener, drop them in the comments because I haven't been able to find content and I need it in my life by yesterday.


End file.
